Communicating Seismic Risk Information: The Effect of Risk Comparisons on Risk Perception Sensitivity

Communicating seismic risk to individuals can be difficult for an institution because it involves providing technical and scientific information, including the low probability of an adverse event, that is not always easy to understand. One way to facilitate understanding of low probabilities is to provide comparisons with the probability of occurrence of other more familiar events. In a randomized trials experiment, we investigated the effect of providing individuals with a set of risk comparisons on their sensitivity to different levels of seismic risk (1 in 100, 1 in 1,000, and 1 in 10,000). The findings show that providing risk comparisons increased individual risk sensitivity to information about the likelihood of experiencing a seismic event. Our findings are explained by the evaluability hypothesis, which states that a single probability value is better understood if the recipient is given some reference data to evaluate it. Our results have implications for disaster risk communication, providing ways to increase risk awareness and, consequently, disaster prevention

Lateral reading and monetary incentives to spot disinformation about science

Peer reviewe

Countering vaccine hesitancy through medical expert endorsement

Scientists and medical experts are among the professionals trusted the most. Are they also the most suitable figures to convince the general public to get vaccinated? In a pre-registered experiment, we tested whether expert endorsement increases the effectiveness of debunking messages about COVID-19 vaccines. We monitored a sample of 2,277 people in Italy through a longitudinal study along the salient phases of the vaccination campaign. Participants received a series of messages endorsed by either medical researchers (experimental group) or by generic others (control). In order to minimise demand effects, we collected participants’ responses always at ten days from the last debunking message. Whereas we did not find an increase in vaccination behaviour, we found that participants in the experimental group displayed higher intention to vaccinate, as well as more positive beliefs about the protectiveness of vaccines. The more debunking messages the participants received, the greater the increase in vaccination intention in the experimental group compared to control. This suggests that multiple exposure is critical for the effectiveness of expert-endorsed debunking messages. In addition, these effects are significant regardless of participants’ trust toward science. Our results suggest that scientist and medical experts are not simply a generally trustworthy category but also a well suited messenger in contrasting disinformation during vaccination campaigns

The Robotic Herd: Using Human-Bot Interactions to Explore Irrational Herding

We explore human herding in a strategic setting where humans interact with automated entities (bots) and study the shift in the behavior and beliefs of humans when they are aware of interacting with bots. The strategic setting is an online minority game, where 1,997 participants are rewarded for following the minority strategy. This setting permits distinguishing between irrational herding and rational self-interesta fundamental challenge in understanding herding in strategic contexts. Moreover, participants were divided into two groups: one informed of playing against bots (informed condition) and the other unaware (uninformed condition). Our findings revealed that while informed participants adjusted their beliefs about bots' behavior, their actual decisions remained largely unaffected. In both conditions, 30% of participants followed the majority, contrary to theoretical expectations of no herding. This study underscores the persistence of herding behavior in human decision-making, even when participants are aware of interacting with automated entities. The insights provide profound implications for understanding human behavior on digital platforms where interactions with bots are common

The burden of experience: Remembering life events increases poor people's rejection of risky but favorable bets

The burden of poverty is caused by both material deprivation and the psychological threat associated with it. Poverty has been found to diminish cognitive ability and cause the poor to forego beneficial programs. In the present study, we examined how exacerbating the psychological burden of poverty through an intervention that asked participants to recall a negative personal experience that made them feel unsuccessful influences the rate of acceptance of mixed gambles. Mixed gambles yield both gains and losses and simulate choices in life that contain both a risk of loss and an opportunity for gain. A second group of participants was asked to recall a positive personal experience that made them feel successful or proud, while a third group was not assigned any recall task. Experiment 1 targeted the intervention to a group of people living in extreme poverty in Kenya. Experiment 2 replicated the study in a group of non-poor students in Italy. Experiment 3 replicated the study online with a heterogeneous sample of people living in the UK. Results showed that recalling a negative life experience significantly reduced the average expected value of the accepted gambles. Recalling a positive life experience also significantly reduced the average expected value of accepted bets, although to a lesser extent. However, the treatments only affected poor individuals (Experiment 1), whereas non-poor individuals (Experiments 2 and 3) were immune to this effect. In addition, neither education nor cognitive ability was found to mediate the effect. These findings show that the burden of poverty can increase loss aversion, discouraging the poor from accepting risky investments with a positive expected value that could help them escape poverty in the long run, such as investments in personal education, small businesses, or retirement plans